Hey readers, I’m heading to Chicago the 2nd week of August to cook with chefs and home cooks for my next book and I need your help. Who are your favorite Chicago chefs? What are your favorite Chicago restaurants? It’d be great if you could share the less obvious ones (yes, I’ve reached out to Rick Bayless…still haven’t heard back!); also if you know any stand-out home cooks with unique stories or cooking styles, let me know that too. Thanks!
What’s that expression about teachers learning from their students? Is there an expression like that? There really should be.
You may recall that for my cookbook I have an intern named Tyla working with me. Tyla herself has a food blog called “Learning To Live Without A Microwave” and on her blog last week I saw an excellent recipe for “Zucchini Saute with Toasted Almonds.” Now Tyla got the recipe from my friend Deb of Smitten Kitchen who titled the post “My Favorite Side Dish”; Deb, in turn, got it from The Red Cat restaurant. (Another game of recipe telephone.) But the point is that I discovered it from Tyla and it’s such a killer recipe it’s time you discovered it from me; it takes just a few minutes and it’s a “wow-er.”
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This past week has been pretty swell. I feel like I’m finally easing into summer, something I wasn’t sure was going to happen. I spent a couple nights under the stars with WB, cleaned off the back patio, grilled more meals than I cooked indoors, put some finishing touches on the manuscript, ate mint soft serve at Il Cane Rosso, made tofu burgers twice, saw whales migrating north, and picked up a few vintage baking pans in an antique shop in Healdsburg. That being said, I think the thing that really set the summertime tone around here was finding a tiny frog, no larger than my thumbnail, hopping around under my desk. We caught him in a Mason jar and released him out back.
My first thought was that the little guy must have hopped into our camping gear in an attempt to go from country frog to city frog. But it turns out the likely culprit was my nephew, who spent Sunday morning with us. My sister told me later they have lots of little frogs in their back yard, and he loves to try to catch them. Mystery solved - a toddler here with frogs in his pockets, and one made a break for it.
On the cooking front, I’ve been cleaning out some drawers. Primarily going through old magazine clippings (which is part of the reason I’ve been featuring more magazine inspired recipes than usual). I’ve been finding lots of gems, and these tofu burgers were one of the recipes that jumped out at me. I’ve adapted them from a reader contributed recipe that ran in the October 2004 issue of Sunset Magazine. The recipe was sent to Sunset by Jeremy Wolf of San Francisco, and I quite enjoyed them. They were impossibly easy to make, relying on the “throw everything in the food processor” technique, and called for a quirky mix of ingredients ranging from tofu, seeds, and nuts, to mustard, cumin, and mushrooms.
I suspect you’ll be tempted to tweak the seasonings, it’s the nature of the beast. Here’s my advice. Don’t skimp on the cumin or mustard, you need some assertive flavors to kick in - keep in mind you’re dealing with ground tofu and eggs as a burger base. Alternately, if you play around with the seasonings - think bold.
Continue reading Tofu Burgers…
Nothing like shutting down the old server to make you realize exactly what only existed there. Trivial things, like banners…sidebar images…my brain…
I am off to search through the detritus that passes for a hard drive at my place for missing images, followed by a careful comb through the code for what else is freaked out.
Sorry for the mess, it’ll be better soon.
Summer has descended on the northwest like a wet wool blanket. It hit 90 in our little fog valley yesterday, which is far too hot to spend much time in the kitchen. This leaves me craving homemade bread - and other baked goodies - but distinctly avoiding the means of making any.When that happens, I have a go-to recipe: biscuits.Specifically, I go to one of the most popular recipes on kitchenMage:
